The interview can be regarded as a selection device that is adopted by almost every company (Lowry, 1994). Experts in this area would think a structured interview is more reliable and valid than an unstructured interview due to its consistency and standardization (McDaniel et al., 1994). The situational interview is a typical structured interview. Compared to other conventional types of interviews, such as psychological interviews, job-related interviews and behavioural interviews, situational interviews can yield higher validity and reliability (McDaniel et al., 1994). This paper aims at discussing why situational interviews tend to be more valid and how situational interviews achieve higher validity. Additionally, the author will suggest a typically successful procedure of a situational interview and some possible mistakes as well as recommendations will be given at the end.

Structured Interview

Interviews can differentiate from each other by their standardization extent. Experts in this field may not have the same definition of a structured interview, whilst most of them would consider that an interview is structured in that the content of questions and acceptable answers were predetermined and candidate’s responses will be rated for the appropriateness of their content (McDaniel et al., 1994). According to Dessler (2011), a structured (or directive) interview can be defined as an interview that follows a predetermined subsequence of questions. On the contrary, unstructured interviews usually gather information from candidates in a less symmetric way. Seldom can people predict the answers in unstructured interviews. Consequently, there is hardly any scoring standard in unstructured interviews.

Based on previous research (McDaniel et al., 1994; Schmidt & Zimmerman, 2004), people are inclined to hypothesize more validity and reliability on structured interviews rather than unstructured interviews. Empirically and theoretically, the interview structure can affect evaluation results in two approaches. First, the lower degree of standardization may lead unstructured interviews to lower reliability and validity (Schmidt & Zimmerman, 2004). Second, structured interviews are able to acquire wider range of information than unstructured interviews (Lowry, 1994).

In addition, it is hard to clearly draw a line between structured interviews and unstructured interviews. Practically, the distinction between them is a matter of extent (Dessler, 2011).

Situational Interviews Can Yield High Validity

1. The validity of interviews

To evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of situational interviews, validity is of immense significance. According to Walsh and Bets (2001), an interview can be conceived as valid if it can measure what the interviewers want to measure. Usually, the validity of interviews is tested in terms of predicting candidates’ job performance and training performance. Referring to past research (McDaniel et al., 1994; Schmidt & Zimmerman, 2004), structured interviews, despite the content, can yield higher validity than unstructured interviews. Also, with regard to interview content, situational interviews are more valid than job-related interviews, which are more valid than psychological interviews (McDaniel et al. 1994).

2. Situational interviews

A situational question is usually a dilemma based on symmetric job analysis, which requires candidates to give a possible solution (Gary et al. 1980).

Although interviews can be categorized by various content of questions, basically, all situational interviews are structured interviews (McDaniel et al. 1994). Because the questions and acceptable answers of a situational interview are designed in advance, the interview tends to be more structured rather than unstructured.

There are two factors influencing a situational interview to be valid. First, a situational interview is a high-standardized interview, which...

YOU MAY ALSO FIND THESE DOCUMENTS HELPFUL

...
Describe the structuredinterview. What are the characteristics of structuredinterviews that improve on the shortcomings of unstructured interviews? Develop one original situational question and an accompanying rating scale using benchmark responses with assigned values to be used in a structuredinterview. Be sure to note the task you are targeting for the job....

......................................................15
8.0 References..............................................................................................................................16
1.0 INTRODUCTION
The traditional job interview uses broad-based questions such as, "why do you want to work for this company," and "tell me about your strengths and weaknesses." Interviewing success of failure are more often based on the ability of the job-seeker to...

...
The Career Interview must be uploaded to LiveText as a Microsoft Word Document or an Adobe PDF file.
You can access LiveText via Moodle.
Career Interview is worth a possible 100 points
Career Interview
Students should interview a person of their choice who has earned a college degree and is in a position in
which they hope to obtain after graduating from college. If you are having a difficult time finding someone
to...

...The Interview
Type Of Interview
For my assignment I chose to examine an interview I was a party to at my
place of employment with the local Association For Community Living. It was an
orientation meeting for a new client moving into a group home where I currently
work as a Direct Care Worker. Under the classification of interviews, my
analysis focuses on an Information Giving type of interview.
As outlined in class,...

...Interview
An interview is a conversation between two or more people where questions are asked by the interviewer to elicit facts or statements from the interviewee. Interviews are a standard part of journalism and media reporting, but are also employed in many other situations, including qualitative research.
In Human resource management:
A somewhat formal discussion between a hirer and an applicant or candidate, typically in person, in...

...By
Advithi Dilip
II MBA (HR)
1220046
Introduction
Job interviews are critical to the quality of an organization's people. Good job interviews processes and methods increase the quality of people in an organization. Poor job interviews methods result in poor selection, which undermines organizational capabilities, wastes management time, and increases staff turnover.
Many interviewers and interviewees are keenly interested in 'tough'...

...Structuredinterview is a specific set of questions that can be asked to any person to help diagnose an abnormal psychological disorder. Before I began my structuredinterview I read through the set of questions to get the flow of the interview. I also tried to imagine what a person might hold back about and made some side notes on how I would try to encourage the patient to give more information. I have not given many...

...organisation objectives. There is variety of methods available to assist in the selection process including interviews, physical test, role plays and team exercises. Usually a range of methods will be used by the organisation depending on the type of job to be filled, the skills of the recruiter and the budget for recruitment. However, most jobs are filled through interviews. The interview is popular because it is more personal than traditional...